


all that you can’t leave behind

by foolycoolie



Category: Julie and The Phantoms (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Childhood Friends to Lovers, F/M, M/M, Minutemen AU, Slow Burn, Time Travel, and wacky hijinks ensue, inexplicably 2000s coded, the sunset curve boys become time travellers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-06
Updated: 2020-12-06
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:07:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27916498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foolycoolie/pseuds/foolycoolie
Summary: There are many ways Luke Patterson expected his senior year to go. His best friend coming up with a working theory for time travel was not on the cards.Neither was actually bringing the theory to life.
Relationships: Alex/Willie (Julie and The Phantoms), Julie Molina/Luke Patterson
Comments: 8
Kudos: 50





	all that you can’t leave behind

**Author's Note:**

> apparently my niche is writing AUs based on slightly obscure mid 2000s disney channel original movies. my love of time travel + jatp is unstoppable.

There are many ways Luke Patterson expected to start senior year. Sitting at the absolute bottom of the social hierarchy was not one of them.

When he was younger, he never properly understood why high school was so dramatic in movies. It was always so messy - people falling in and out of love, getting into fights over the tiniest things, acting like it was the end of the world when their prom wasn’t perfect. He always voiced his complaints very vocally when Julie forced him to watch yet another romcom. 

_ “Can’t they just talk about their feelings for one another? This all just feels so stupid.” _

_ “It’s about the romance, Luke! They’re so overwhelmed by their own feelings that they can’t put it into words.” _

It didn’t take much in his freshman year for him to understand that movies really didn’t exaggerate him. First it was falling for Julie over the summer, then came The Incident which basically sealed his fate as resident nobody. The rest is long winded and a tad depressing. 

It’s fine though, because Luke doesn’t really mind being on the sidelines. He’s gotten good at watching people, trying to understand their complexities and the delicate balance of the high school ecosystem. It’s fuel for his song writing, lyrics scratched in the empty space of any notebook he can get his hands on. There’s a comfort that comes only from the feeling of a guitar in his hands, melodies pouring from his fingertips. Music helps make sense of all the mess — an expression of the trials of being a teenager from the experience of being one. One day he’ll finally get a band together properly and they’ll share that music with the world; people will dance and sing along to his lyrics and he can delight in seeing the joy on their faces. It’s the only connection he needs.

So it’s fine that he barely has any real friends. It’s fine that he’s spent the last three years with most classmates not knowing his name. It’s fine that Julie moved up to popular status with Nick after The Incident and left him behind. It’s fine that the three of them made a pact at the end of middle school that they would always be friends.

It’s fine because Luke Patterson starts senior year with his music and a surprise from one Alex Mercer.

—

“No, Luke, this is  _ seriously _ super interesting.”

It’s barely 8:15am and Alex is already rambling on. It is a mystery where he gets this amount of energy.

“So these mycorrhizal networks, they’re these  _ big _ connecting fungi that help transport water and nutrients between trees. But — and this is the really cool thing — the trees are able to communicate via these networks. They send electrical signals like in our brains to alert the other trees, and those trees then change their behavior based on that! I mean how cool is that?”

Luke has already locked his bike up to the rack by the time Alex finishes his little ramble, watching Luke intently for a response. Without even trying, he’s got the puppy eyes in full effect. A sigh escapes Luke’s lips as he swings his backpack across one shoulder.

“Alex, please tell me that you haven’t spent all summer just researching trees.”

Alex’s taken aback for a moment, raising his hand to his chest in mock despair. He stammers for a moment, eyes desperately searching the car park looking for some kind of defense.

“Yeah- weeeell… not all summer! Just— just a significant portion.” He punctuates his statement by placing his hands on his hips, giving Luke an easygoing smile that barely passes as convincing. Moments like these are where Luke wonders what possessed him to introduce himself to Alex in the first place. He could recite an endless number of scientific theorems off by heart, but at the cost of a serious lack of social skills.

“Alright, well, what else did you do? If you tell me you didn’t invent anything, I won’t believe you.” He says as the pair of boys fall in with the rest of the crowd moving towards the front door of Los Feliz High School. There’s a couple of familiar faces belonging to other seniors, but mostly the air is abuzz with the infectious nerves of freshmen mingling about not knowing where to go.

Alex’s eyes light up at the question like a child on Christmas Day seeing the biggest present has his name on it.  _ Again with the energy.  _ “Oh! Not exactly… I’ve been just going over old ideas, y’know? Looking at things from a different perspective.”

Vague and mysterious - when it came to Alex these things usually spell trouble. “Like what exactly?”

He pauses in the middle of the walkway and grabs Luke by the shoulders, slowly leaning in as his smile grows into a full blown grin. The sudden touch makes Luke want to recoil far back into his hoodie, but he steels himself and stays put.  _ It’s just Alex,  _ he thinks,  _ you’ve been best friends for years now.  _

“Something very big and very cool. But I can’t tell you yet.”

“Come on, Alex. Can you at least give me a hint?”

“Nope!” 

“At least tell me it’s not that emotional monitor thing.” Alex’s little science project last summer was attempting to understand what each of his cat’s different meows mean in an attempt to build human-animal language skills (that was Alex’s phrasing, not Luke’s). 

“Emotional modulator, and no. This is something even  _ cooler _ .”

Luke shoves his hands into the pockets of his jeans, tilting his head as he gives Alex a look. The other boy seems to get the hint and lets go of Luke, finally letting out a heavy sigh.

“Alright, listen, I can’t tell you now — but I  _ promise  _ as soon as it’s ready you’ll be the first person to know.” He holds a pinky out towards his friend, a sheepish smile gracing his features. “Promise.”

As much as he wanted to be frustrated by Alex, he really couldn’t. The constant science talk, strange gadgets cobbled together from broken toys, and backyard experiments that claimed the life of Luke’s eyebrows was always made less frustrating by how excited Alex got whenever one of his hypotheses worked. The enthusiasm radiated off him in a way that always wound up affecting him as well. Despite their reputation amongst the student body following The Incident, Alex took it in stride and kept true to himself. If anyone was going to become bigger than this school after they left, it was Alex Mercer.

With a small huff, Luke locked pinkies with him, sealing the deal.

“Promise.”

Alex flashed him the biggest grin physically possible (god he really was a puppy) before suddenly spinning around. Luke follows his gaze as the roar of a Harley-Davidson fills the car park, its helmeted rider flying through to park in the small gap next to the bike rack. In the split second he looked away, Alex was already walking over to the motorcycle. This absolutely cannot end well.

“Hey, I’m pretty sure you can’t just park your motorcycle here—” Alex is already addressing the rider midway through Luke’s desperate sprint to catch him. He skids to a sudden halt, an apology for his best friend already on his lips, but the rider stands up before he can speak. They slowly removed the helmet, revealing short black hair drenched in sweat. The boy looks about the same age as them with a permanent scowl etched onto his face. Paired with the leather jacket and chains hanging from his belt, Luke immediately knew that he was not someone to be fucked with.

He raises an eyebrow at them, eyes flickering back and forth between Luke and Alex. There’s a long pause of silence before Luke finally cracks it with an awkward bark of laughter. Perfect time for Alex to go dead quiet and force him to try and rescue things.

“Hey, uh, sorry about him— your bike is really cool though, it’s… it’s neat.” He manages to stammer out, forcing a smile while he gently places his hands on Alex’s shoulders. “It’s all… shiny and… punk. Like you.”  _ Come on buddy, help me out here,  _ he thinks desperately but Alex is still frozen to the spot. The rider continues to silently watch them, confusion slowly seeping into his expression.

“Alrightycoolwearejustgonnagonowthensorrytobotheryou.” The words tumble out faster than his brain can chant at him about how stupid the situation is, his feet pedaling him and Alex backwards towards the front door of the school. His attention is stuck on the rider, still just watching as they disappear into the crowd. If anyone else noticed that little moment, there’s no evidence of it.

This really wasn’t the way Luke expected to start senior year.

—

Alex is seemingly holding true to his claims about this big secret project because he’s absent when lunch rolls around. When Luke inquires of him with some of the other science nerds, they just shrug and claim he’s been holed up alone in the computer lab all day. Which leaves him standing at the maw of the cafeteria, slack jawed trying to figure out who he might still have decent standing with. The nerds were an obvious choice considering that’s where he’s usually sat, but trying to navigate them without Alex as a conduit into the conversation is a minefield he’s attempted before.

After a moment of awkwardly hovering around, he’s ready to just give up and sit in the hallway when a singsong voice calls out. “Hey, Luke!”

He would recognize the voice of Julie Molina anywhere. She excitedly waves to him from the other side of the room, at the table notoriously reserved for the queen bees. Popular kids, invitation only. The rest of the table turns to look at him when she calls out, and the sudden eagle eyed gaze of the school’s elite pierce straight through him. He shakes his head, summoning the words to tell her that he can’t, but she’s smiling so brightly at him and it makes his heart tighten in his chest. 

So he decides, fuck it, and walks over to the table.

Julie’s smile widens as he approaches, shifting around to face him properly. “I thought you were gonna ignore me for a second there, Luke.” 

The rest of the table is still glaring daggers, but he firmly shakes his head and focuses his attention onto her completely. “Of course not, your presence is hard to ignore.” 

Even just a moment of being near her seems to calm his nerves, barely noticing the smile growing on his lips that mirrors her. She was easy to exist around, easy to just be himself. It had always been that way since they first met in elementary school. Inseparable, or so they thought. He clears his throat before asking, “Hey— can, can I…?” 

“Yeah, ‘course! Flynn, scoot over.” Julie gently nudges the girl sitting next to her with her leg, both of them squishing together so that there’s just enough room on the metal seat to fit Luke in. He worms his way into the space, resting his tray on his knees instead of the already crowded table. Now that he’s seated, he can better survey who’s actually at the table. Julie and her best friend Flynn, followed by the resident rich girl Carrie and a couple of her brightly coloured posse and… Nick.  _ Fuck _ . He forgot that Julie and Nick were dating.

“So, Luke, how was your summer?” Flynn volunteers herself for the casual, awkward-but-pretending-its-not-awkward small talk. They always got along fine, just never really having anything to do with each other outside of knowing Julie and sophomore gym class.

“It was fine, y’know. Just the same old… working on music and all that.” Luke gives her a small shrug, poking at what was supposed to be mashed potatoes. 

Julie chimes in, “Classic Luke. Always got a guitar in his hands or a melody in his head.” She softly smiles at him, and right on cue there’s that little flutter in his chest. 

There’s a snort from Carrie, who so far has been content to entirely ignore Luke’s presence. “As if the misunderstood loner who plays guitar isn’t a  _ total  _ cliche. Come ooooon.”

Luke and Julie’s head snap up in nearly perfect sync, while Carrie watches him with a smug expression. He should have expected her to start the snide comments as soon as he sat down. She had clung to her status as  **the** popular girl since the beginning of freshmen year, which also meant she was one of the main perpetrators of The Incident as school legend. 

“What’s that supposed to mean, Carrie?” Julie speaks up before Luke can respond, regarding her with a raised eyebrow and fierce glint in her eyes. The thinly veiled frustration in her voice stuns him; was this an argument they have had before? The notion that he’s come up in their conversations before even when he has nothing to do with this group for the most part chills him from deep within his chest.

Carrie flicks a stray lock of hair back behind, casually looking over to him before back at Julie. “I mean, it seems pretty obvious to me why he’s hung out with the nerds for the last three years. There’s no hope if you’ve been a loser for that long.” There’s a small shrug as a flourish, resting her case with that statement alone as fact. She leans back and turns towards Luke, plastering a saccharine smile on as she addresses him. “You’ve had all this time and yet still the only memorable thing you’ve done at this school was you and that little nerd friend of yours Alex dressed in miniskirts and hanging from the mascot statue.” 

That’s the snapping point. He pushes himself up from his seat, ignoring the tray as it tumbles to the floor. He wants to reach across the table and grab her shoulders, yell at her that he has spent this entire time trying to distance himself from The Incident. That he sometimes wishes he never went to Alex’s defense that day if it meant that this would happen, if it meant losing the only shred of reputation he had as well as his best friends.

But Luke doesn’t do any of that. Instead he stands there, fists clenched so tightly by his side that his nails are marking the fleshy part of his palms with half moons. He  _ glares  _ at Carrie who only watches with a half smile, a lioness in her den knowing that she has the advantage. Even when there are a million things he could say, he says nothing. His gaze eventually drifts around the table from Carrie and her friends to Flynn, Nick, and Julie — all waiting with baited breath to hear what his response is. He lingers on Julie a little too long, on how she is fixated on him, eyes almost pleading. It would be so much easier if it was just the both of them against Carrie. Her presence would be enough to boost his confidence, to raise his voice just that little bit stronger. Even though she was here, his throat still tightens and constricts his words right at the uncomfortable point. Luke couldn’t have an outburst right here, not when the rest of the student body would see it. Not when Julie would get dragged into it as well.

“I— I appreciate you inviting me over, Julie, but I think it’s best if I go now.” The words come out softer than he was expecting, any shred of courage quickly melting. Before anyone has time to react, he grabs his backpack and climbs out of the seat. A small “bye” is mumbled out before Luke turns around and walks as fast as possible out of the cafeteria, tugging at the ends of his hoodie sleeves to cover his shaking hands. The end of Carrie’s laugh is all he manages to catch as he beelines for the hallway.  _ Stupid idiot,  _ he thinks,  _ stupid fucking idiot. How was that meant to go well? _

If only the last image of that encounter in his mind wasn’t Nick draping his arm across Julie’s shoulder as he left.

  
  


—

  
  


He’s mentally clocked out in the middle of World History when suddenly Alex bursts into the room. 

“There’s a reason Tesla’s biographer called his book  _ A Man Out of Time _ — oh! Mister Mercer, what a surprise.” The teacher turned away from the blackboard covered in scrawled notes on notable 19th century inventors. Luke glanced down at his notebook for a moment, trying to recall where they were up to in the lecture, only to be greeted with snippets of lyrics and doodles in the margins. Some things really did never change.

Alex had a frantic look in his eyes, darting around every second as if there was something after him. Even from the distance, Luke can see how rapidly his chest is rising and falling. He glances at the teacher and flings her a lightning quick smile. “Hi miss, sorry it’s an emergency. I need Luke Patterson immediately.”

All eyes shift onto Luke for the second time today since the universe was incapable of letting him have a break. A cluster of giggles break out as he sinks further back into his seat, letting the hoodie consume his form. He shoots Alex a look of  _ please man is it really an emergency _ . This isn’t the first time something like this has happened, the previous emergency resulting in Luke being dragged from a spirit rally as Alex announced he had successfully cultivated a crop of blue grapes. Junior year was a rough time for both of them.

“Mister Patterson?” The teacher calls for him as well and Luke wishes that the punchline for this very long winded joke was coming soon.

“Sorry, he’s not here today. He has, uh… appendicitis.” He eventually responded, trying to ignore the fact that Alex was doing his nervous bounce on the spot. Whatever this was has made him more high strung than usual.

“Very funny, Mister Patterson. Take your things and grab the hall pass on your way out.” She turns back to the blackboard, writing up more notes under the heading ‘Nikola Tesla’. A heavy sigh escapes his lips as he slinks out of his desk and throws his backpack over his shoulder, following Alex who has already started off down the hallway.

By the time Luke catches up with him, they’re walking in the complete opposite direction of the front office. Definitely an Alex type of emergency then.

“Buddy, if you’re gonna spring me from class, you need to tell me what’s so urgent.”

Alex suddenly snaps his focus towards Luke, as if he’s only just remembering that his best friend is there. The nervous energy coming off him is so heavy he can almost breathe it in. Even with all of his experiments and projects, Luke had never seen him like this before.

“Okay, so you know the rocket propulsion vehicle from freshman year? The one from the day of The Incident?”

Luke winces at the words alone. “Yes, and actually it’s been a whole ten minutes since someone reminded me of The Incident so thanks for that.”

The only response to his jab was an eye roll from Alex. “So the vehicle itself was a bust but it did prove one thing to be viable - quantum acceleration. And you remember that physics, multiple realities kick I was on at the beginning of last year?”

“Oh, yeah. That was a fun time.” He likes  _ Back to the Future  _ as much as the next person, but the amount that Alex talked his ear off about the science of that film during junior year almost put him off the science fiction genre entirely. 

“Well, I decided to dive back into that and build my own theorem based on that research and the working quantum acceleration hypothesis. Then I put one of the school’s computers on permanent reserve. It’s been doing most of the leg work.”

They suddenly stop outside the computer lab and Alex turns to face Luke properly. The anxiety has mostly subsided and been replaced with excitement, evident by the knowing smile he’s sporting. “A few minutes ago, I uploaded the last piece of the puzzle.” He quickly turns to fling the lab door open and scuttles inside. Luke shuffles in after him, giving a small wave to the couple of faces who looked up from their terminals to see who had interrupted them. Alex was frantically typing away at a computer in the back corner - how the hell did he get over there so quickly?

As Luke approaches, Alex moves over just enough that the two of them can see the monitor. He looks back towards his best friend, a sudden stoicism in his expression.

“What I’m about to show you is very, very,  _ very  _ top secret. It stays just between us, okay?”

Luke wants to respond by saying that he’s Alex’s best friend, of course he’d carry a secret to the grave. But something about how all over the place Alex has been acting makes him swallow that little joke. This felt different from all his other projects. This felt much bigger. 

“Okay.” He nods, a small reassuring smile settling on his lips. “Okay. I trust you.”

Alex turns back to the computer, typing away until a diagram pops up on the screen. There’s lines of running codes to each side, moving too fast for Luke to begin to comprehend. In the middle of the screen is a rudimentary looking model of a moving tunnel, curving and twisting around as something moves through it. Alex looks up at him, grinning at him.

“I- I mean it looks pretty but I have no clue what it is.”

He rolls his eyes and huffs as though whatever the hell was on the screen was something even a baby could comprehend. He leans in closer to Luke, lowering his voice so just the two of them can hear.

“What you’re looking at is a successful simulation of practical time travel.”

Time travel.

_ Time fucking travel. _

While he’s enamored with the simulation, Luke slowly raises his hands and places them over Alex’s ears.

“Wh- what are you doing?” 

Luke leans in that tiny bit further and whispers, “Stopping your brain from melting out of your skull even more.” 

**Author's Note:**

> so this first chapter very quickly ended up getting away from me which is why it ends kinda abruptly. i was gonna include the scenes with the proper intro for reggie as well as the darling willie but those are relegated to chapter 2 instead. sorry (esp if you’re here for willex)!!
> 
> this is mostly unbeta’d so please let me know if there are any glaring issues. thank you to zoe (spellbelle) and lily (lemonadelaughter) for being my hype squad for this fic, love u both dearly <3
> 
> stay tuned for more!!
> 
> update: of course i post this like 2 days before the canon surnames are announced and of COURSE alex now has the exact same name as the edgy video game man i had a crush on in 2012. anyways


End file.
